It’s Furious Balancing

It started with the fall catalogs.  I could tell that that this Long, Hot, Miserable, Satan’s Arsehole¹ of a Summer would soon be gone.  Then came the fall knitting magazines, both in print and online.  Sweaters!  Mittens!  Wool!  Cozy stuff!  As soon as I finished the ESTJ Socks, I cast on a lightweight beret for myself.

Pattern: Anthera from Twist Collective.  For a mere $6.00, you get a pattern for a beret, cowl, and cuffs.  Instructions are charted, not written out.  Twist Collective has great charts in terms of legibility and ease of use, so don’t wimp out if you’re chart-phobic.  If you can knit, purl, yarn over, ssk, and k2tog, you can make this beret.  I can’t believe that I’m the only person on Ravelry who has made this beret thus far.

Yarn: Louisa Harding Kimono Angora Pure (70% angora, 25% wool, 5% nylon) in Color No. 6, Teal.  I say it’s Turquoise.  Approx. 90 yards.

Size: One size.

Needles: US size 4 and 5 (3.5 mm  and 3.75 mm, respectively) both Brittany Birch DPN’s and Addi Natura 16″ circular

Mods: None, other than the absence of a dorky i-cord macaroni thingy on top.  I’m not fond of dorky i-cord macaroni thingies, so I just left it out.

Comments: This needed Aggressive Blocking to get it to the point where I thought it had enough slouch to be called a beret.   Aggressive Blocking translates to a full 30-minute soak in Soak and a 10½ inch dinner plate.   The lace pattern really opened up.  If you like a lot of slouch in your berets, I think you could do an additional repeat of Rows 1-12 from Chart A and add about 1½ to 2 inches to the depth of the hat.

This is perfect for fall.  I plan on wearing it with my brown leather jacket and Norovirus Scarf v. 2.0

1. Like everything, there’s a story behind this one.  I was going to compare the hot weather to the 9th Circle of Hell.  Then I remembered — somewhat incorrectly — that the 9th Circle was where Satan was face-planted in ice.  The face-planting part  was what I misremembered.  In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is embedded in ice at his middle, and as Dante and Virgil pass through the exact center of Hell and get to the other side, they see Satan’s rear view.  Long story short, I thought that as you leave the 8th Circle and move into the 9th, you would see Satan’s butt. [↩]

These are photos of my twin brother and me, taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 1970-1972 or so.  Teh Husband and I bought a printer cum photocopier cum scanner, and I’ve been messing around with scanning old photographs.  You know, the ones from back in The Dark Ages when everything wasn’t digitized and there were such things as film and negatives.

I scanned these with the idea that I would update my Facebook avatar with a photo of myself, albeit one taken almost 40 years ago.  It may sound odd, but every time I see this avatar of myself, I feel happier.  It reminds me, somehow, of when I was feisty and playful and had all those years stretching out ahead of me.

I’m not saying that I’m no longer feisty, or that I feel that I’m out of time.  No, it’s not that.  I see this little girl and know that she’s still a part of me, that I’m still pretty damn feisty, and that I would like to get out of this dress, please, and into my playclothes so I can go climb trees or play down by the creek.  Milk and cookies afterward.

One of my co-workers  is having a birthday today.  Sometimes I find it rather challenging to work with her because she’s an off-the-charts extrovert and I an on-the-charts-in-the-95th-percentile introvert.

That 95% percentile business is from the Myers-Briggs personality test that’s on the bar graph to the right.  My four-letter personality “type” is an ISTJ.  I had emailed a similar test to my co-worker a few years ago, an she came out as an ESTJ.  You would think that we would get along really well, but I have to tell you that’s just not the case.¹  The person at the office with whom I get along best is diametrically opposed to me – an ENFP.²

Despite this conflict personality-wise I have with the Birthday Girl, I thought it would be a good idea to knit her a pair of socks.  There are several reasons behind this:

• Every time I wear my Tonks’ Socks, she compliments them, my knitting skills, or the cool self-striping sock yarn.
• She’s had a rough year.  Her father passed away not too long ago and her family is, to put it mildly, dysfunctional.
• It would help me get over myself.

So, here they are:

Pattern: Basic Sock Pattern, Ann Budd, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges.

Yarn: Opal Rainforest 6-ply. This is a sport weight yarn, and you can fly through a pair of socks. Of course, it took me three months to finish these because I am… uh… easily distracted by other knitting projects.

Size: Woman’s M/L. I hope they fit!  I had to sorta/kinda guess.

Needles: US size 2.0 (2.75 mm) Brittany Birch DPN’s.

Mods: None.  Even though I do modifications on socks I knit for myself, I needed to follow the generic pattern on this one.  Customizing a fit by guess work is not something I wanted to do.

I’ll take them in to work tomorrow.  They’re all wrapped and ready to go, along with a sample of Soak wool wash and care instruction sheet.  Yep, I’m an ISTJ all right.

1. I’m not going into any particulars, because I have this thing about privacy when I write about other people on my blog. [↩]
2. And a Republican to boot.  I love her anyway, and she seems to put up with me rather well. She was the recipient of the Scrunchable Scarf. [↩]

I think I’ve found a cure for my seasonal depression — Anger.

It’s really more righteous indignation than anger, but if it’s enough to get me off my butt and write a post, I’ll take it.

There are two things that push my Anger Buttons:

• Intolerance in any form, from your garden-variety racism to intolerance based on a person’s sexual orientation, religion, social class, etc.
• Stomping on someone’s civil liberties.  I’m a proud, card-carrying member of the ACLU,¹ and Teh Husband and I send in a monthly contribution via automatic withdrawals from our checking account.  I believe his main concern is privacy issues,² while mine is the straightforward First Amendment stuff:  Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press.

If you’re paying any attention to current events in the United States you will know exactly what I’m talking about.  I’m not here to write a post discussing the issue in detail, I just need to say this:

If you’re wrapping yourself in the flag³ and claiming what a “real American” you are for opposing Park51, it’s painfully obvious that you have no concept of the principles set forth in the Bill of Rights.  None.  You are a “faux American.”   Pathetic.  My suggestion to you is to grab a Sharpie and write “IGNORANT BIGOT” on your forehead in really big letters.  That will save us the trouble of having to listen to you.

1. Since 2005 [↩]
2. Correct me if I’m wrong here, Sugar. [↩]
3. Or posting it on your Facebook profile, which is what really set me off.  I love my country and respect the flag; I dislike seeing Old Glory co-opted by a group of zealots. [↩]

Oh, yes there is.  Lots of coffee, lots of yarn, lots of narcotics, and a daily dose of Wellbutrin XL.¹

Okay, I’m being facetious here.  My summer blues are hitting me very hard  and I’m feeling rather grim and cynical.  I’m functioning, but the days are long and draining.  I find myself dreaming of cooler weather.  Long nights.  Frost.

I thought it would be a good idea to write a post — even a short one — to let the Innernets know that I’m still alive — just in a truly foul mood. When I’m “like this” writing is a chore.  Actually, just about everything is a chore.  Meh.

I’ll be back when I feel better.

1. 450mg in the morning [↩]

I gave these FO’s to my pregnant co-worker  on Friday (which was her last day at the office).  She was pleased with them.  Since her mother knits, she knows how much time/effort goes into a knitted gift.

The problem with Stealth Knitting is that you really can’t do a blog post until the gift is given.  My notes on Ravelry say that I finished the second pair a month ago!

Pattern: Infant Socks¹ by Judy Ellis

Yarn: Shibui Knits Sock in the Lily colorway, 100% merino wool, approx. 70 yards

Needles: US size 0 (2.0 mm)

Size: Bebeh sized.  I really can’t tell if these are too big for a newborn or not, but considering how quickly babies grow, I know they will fit soon.

Mods: I cast on 36 stitches instead of the 40 the pattern called for, and did 2×2 ribbing instead of 1×1.

I made three socks for each of these projects; I just don’t have a photo of all three of the orange ones.

Yarn:  ONline Supersocke 100, 75% wool, 25% nylon, approximately 115 yards.²

No mods, same sized needles.

These were an incredibly fast knit and might very well become my go-to baby project.  Knitted socks are (in my mind) more impressive than a plain hat or blanket, since it takes a certain level of skill to knit them.  They are also incredibly cute.  When I was showing them to some of the other people in my office, even some of the men were on the verge of squealing from the Cuteness of It All.

I’ve got another batch of Stealth Knitting underway, but this is Christmas Stealth Knitting.  You’re going to have a bit of a wait.

1. Link outside Ravelry [↩]
2. The link isn’t to this colorway (Savannah 1033) since it has been discontinued. [↩]

I’ve finished The Blue Wollmeise Socks.  The depth and intensity of the Blue Curaçao colorway is nothing short of amazing to me.

Information junkie that I am, I did look up blue curaçao in Wikipedia and discovered that the liqueur — made from bitter oranges — is actually colorless.  Further link-clicking divulged that Curaçao is an island off the coast of Venezuela, whose name may have derived from  the Portuguese word for the state of becoming cured (curação).  Oranges.  Sailors.  Scurvy.  You get the picture.

Pattern:  Hermione’s Everyday Socks; the link is to the designer’s blog, for those of you not on Ravelry. ¹  I think this is a great pattern for just about any sock yarn:  semi-solids, wild handpaints, not-wild handpaints, self-striping.  The texture is subtle and the pattern is easy to memorize.

Yarn:   Wollmeise 100% Merino Superwash in the aforementioned Blue Curaçao colorway.  Wollmeise is, indeed, Everything and All That.  These socks have amazing drape, which makes them feel and look “dressier” than any of the other socks I’ve made.  One significant problem with the Wollmeise, though, is that it is a Cat Hair Magnet.  I was constantly using the lint roller on these socks while they were WIP’s.  I couldn’t set them down without them sucking up all the cat hair in a ten-foot radius.

Needles:  Kollage Square DPN’s, US size 1 and 0.  I started with the 1′s, then switched to the 0′s when about 75-80% of the leg was done.

Size:  Women’s Small.  My shoe size is 6½, so I can get away with making a pair of socks AND a scarf out of one skein of Wollmeise.  I am shamelessly smug about this.

Mods:  Cast on 60 stitches instead of 64.  I didn’t do the garter-stitch edging for the heel flap which, in retrospect, was not the best choice.  There is one spot on one of the heels where my half-assed picking up of stitches sticks out like a sore thumb.  My half-assed-ness would be better hidden by the garter stitch.  I console myself with the idea that (a) I could have still had the half-assed-ness even with the garter stitch border and (b) no one will see it while I’m wearing the socks.

I started the next pair of socks almost immediately, using this yarn:

Those colors will help me cope with the awful sunlight and heat.  Three more months…  Gack.  Time to turn up the air conditioning.

1. Why the heck aren’t you on Ravelry by now?!? [↩]

I have hit full-blown obsessive sock knitting mode.  Having slogged through the “summer knitting” magazines and e-zines and catalogs — all of them getting excited and breathless about tank tops and “flirty” skirts  made with cotton/linen/bamboo/raffia/wicker — I’ve decided the best way to cope is to crank out a lot of socks.  Wool socks.  Winter socks.  Thick, warm socks that make you wish for the cool, brisk days of October or the frozen, crystalline perfection of a field of freshly fallen snow.

Or something like that.  You call it summer – I call it Three Months of Hell.

I have four pairs of adult socks on the needles right now — one for Teh Husband, two for me, and one for a birthday gift for a co-worker.  I don’t have pictures, mainly because I don’t want to traipse outside¹  to take photos in 85+ degree weather.   I know one is supposed to suffer for art, but I’m drawing the line right there.

* * * * *

1. To take advantage of the natural light. [↩]

When…everyone was competing for airtime, I felt invisible and became over-stimulated and anxious.  My anxiety was not about the pressure to socialize; there were more than enough bodies to take care of that.  I became anxious because I couldn’t think, and, without my own mind, I felt like I was disintegrating….In my solitude, I could regain contact with myself and become solid again. Laurie Helgoe, PhD.

That is the most apt, most accurate description of the life of an introvert in an extroverted world that I have ever read.  Truly.  When I read it, I felt as if I had the breath knocked out of me, almost like I had been punched in the stomach.  Someone understands.  Someone gets it.

I haven’t been showing up here too frequently because I haven’t been able to recover very well from my work.  For whatever unknown reason, my work load has doubled in the past two weeks.  It is utterly insane.  It’s not my boss dumping stuff on me; he is as gobsmacked as I am.  By the end of the day, I’m ready to curl up in the fetal position and eat ice cream for dinner.  I find that I’m needing more and more time to regroup so I can go back to the office the next day.

I’m around.  I am basically okay.  I’m just not feeling very chatty lately.  I’ve been knitting and reading and watching documentaries.

I’ve been rebuilding myself daily.

I was surfing the Innernets this morning, reading the news and minding my own business, when an article in Slate started an avalanche in my Wee Little Brain.  I don’t think I’m capable of crafting an honest-to-God blog post out of this yet,¹ but I thought I could amuse someone out there with my notes on my train of thought.  My utterly derailed Train of Thought.

I did go back over this inchoate list of notes to make it look somewhat formatted, and I added in my links.  It’s not all off the cuff.  Hopefully, there is a gram of sense in it.  Somewhere.  All I know is that I need to go back to my World War II/German history books and do a lot of re-reading.

————————————-

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
– George Santayana

William L. Shirer made these words the epigraph for his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959).

Note that I should finish Rise and Fall, former bedtime reading, having only made it up to the Anschluss.  I would read two pages before falling asleep, worry of breaking nose from hardcover book.

Don’t Ignore the Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History, Slate article by Ron Rosenbaum.

Tea Party movement = Ignorance of History.  Ignorance of meaning of the words socialism, Nazism, Communism, etc.

Rosenbaum is the author of Explaining Hitler, which is not a Hitler apologia apologist (determine noun, an historical apologist writes what?  Apologies, certainly, but there must be a better word, based on root apolog-.) My reading of that and of personal narratives of German citizens during the Hitler years has been met with unspoken condescension — usually from people unable to cope with anything that actually requires them to think about what they read.

These books are not a glorification or a rationalization of Hitler or of Nazi Germany, but stem from a need to understand; and I read them due to my own German descent and my interest in the complicated nature of human evil and in the lack of black/white dichotomies.

My fascination with shades of gray in the human psyche, how easy it is to push someone from sanity/rationality over the edge.  Incremental and unnoticed for the most part.  Similar to ease of losing humanity under extreme duress [lack of food, example of Primo Levi (?) -- or was it Elie Weisel (?) --in Auschwitz listening to father's death rattle in hopes of getting his stuff.  Boots?  Blanket?]; or not [1950's or 1960's psychological research study at U.S. college of prisoners vs. wardens - find link The Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971].

If it is that simple — simple as in “not complicated,” not “easy” — to become inhuman to others, how simple is it to manipulate the narrative to merely plant the seeds of a social movement that takes us backwards towards intolerance, racism, xenophobia, and worse.  A spiral into madness.

Weimar Republic, social history.  Analogous to today?  Tea Party, by their inability to understand history, is becoming a tool to lead us into a repeat of that not-understood history.

1. Excuses = Allergies.  Hormones.  Distracted by Sock Knitting [↩]

doxy (n) , pl. doxies.   1.  Floozy, prostitute.  2.  Mistress.  Etymology: perhaps modification of obsolete Dutch docke doll, from Middle Dutch.¹

I must admit that the socks from my prior post have been cast by the wayside like a used Kleenex.  I worked about 4 to 5 inches on the leg when I discovered that the yarn wasn’t up to my standards.  Oh, it had lovely stitch definition and was very soft, but the dye job was sloppy.  I encountered more than a few white spots where the dye didn’t take, or something.  If it was a less intense colorway, this wouldn’t have been an issue, but…   Life is too short to knit with substandard yarn.

I started another pair with the leftover Wollmeise I had from the Isadora Duncan Scarf.  Considering that the scarf used only 1/3 of the skein, I figured I could get a pair of socks out of the remainder.²  The Wollmeise is far superior to the other stuff, let me tell you, but it does seem to attract more than the usual amount of cat hair.

The pattern, Hermione’s Everyday Socks, is easy to memorize; the texture is a mixture of knit and purl stitches only.

The Wollmeise socks are making me quite happy, but there are other sock projects preying upon my mind.  I’ve been working off and on on a pair of socks for Teh Husband, and I’m itching to start on a Stealth Sock Project that I want to finish by mid-August.  Teh Husband’s socks are a not-tremendously-exciting semi-solid gray,³ but the Stealth Socks will be Opal Sockenwolle self-striping goodness.

That’s sport weight sock yarn, mind you, and should knit up in no time at all.  I’ve promised myself not to cast on for them until the first Wollmeise sock is done.  Maybe.

I’ve been making all sorts of bargains with myself about what is a “normal” number of pairs of knitted socks to have in progress at the same time.  Three?  That could be pushing it a little.  I’m such a tramp.

1. Source: Merriam-Webster online dictionary. [↩]
2. Approx. 360 yards or so. [↩]
3. Dream in Color Smooshy in Grey Tabby.  It’s one of my favorite yarns, but, like I said, it’s grey. [↩]

1.  To those of you asking the question, “How much longer can Laiane put off finishing her taxes?” Not much longer.  In fact, about a week.  Maybe.  The thing that bogs me down every year is getting all the charitable deductions tallied up and documented.  Maybe I would be more motivated if we were getting money back, but that isn’t the case.  I have an issue with giving the government interest-free loans.

2.  I like to think that I could find common ground, or at least a conversational topic, with just about anyone, even with The Ultimate Source of Evil in the Universe.  You may refer to him as Dick Cheney.  What could we discuss?  How to shoot someone in the face and make it look like an accident. Then I thought about Sarah Palin, and I drew a complete blank.  Then I thought about what my Gramma Fran would have to say about Mrs. Palin, and I got completely derailed.

3.  I announced on Facebook, but didn’t announce here on Teh Blog, that I have finally paid off all my credit card debt.  It took about 2 years, all told.  Time to start that Emergency Fund that  you’re supposed to have, according to all the financial advisor types.  The problem is, my Emergency Fund is titled Laiane’s Emergency Fund To Get Her Butt to Europe When She Can No Longer Cope with the Lack of Substance in the United States.

4.  Look!  Another sock!

Eventually I’ll feel inclined to write longer paragraphs, or maybe I’ll just go back to posting LOLCats.

Big doesn’t necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren’t better than violets. — Edna Ferber

I am particularly taken with sock knitting. Socks are practical, beautiful, and endlessly entertaining by their variety. Sock knitting is also very portable and easily stashed in a purse.  I can’t say the same for a sweater.

I’m a top-down, heel flap, DPN¹ kind of sock knitter, which I strangely believe is “more traditional” even though there is a tradition of toe-up sock knitting in Eastern Europe. Or at least I think Eastern Europe is one of several places with a history of toe-up socks, and perhaps the Levantine. I’m a knitter, not a knitting historian.  /shrug

I intend to learn how to knit toe-up socks.  Eventually. I also intend to learn conversational French and Latin ballroom dancing, so there you go.

When I almost-finished the brown alpaca cardigan, I was looking about for an easy, soothing knitting project. ²  I decided that some German self-striping sock yarn and a k3p1 rib was the way to go.

Pattern: Sock Recipe: A Good Plain Sock in Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Knitting Rules.   Not truly a pattern, but guidelines for knitting a sock with any yarn, any gauge, and any needle.  I worked k1p1 ribbing for about an inch, then switched to k3p1 ribbing.  Standard slip stitch heel and basic toe.

Yarn: Meilenweit Magdalena Neuner from Lana Grossa, color 8331.

Needles: US size 1 and 0.  I switched to the smaller needles about an inch before the heel flap to customize the fit.

Size: Small-ish.  Made for a person with gargantuan calves and dainty size 6½ feet.

Mods: I shortened the number of rows in the heel flap by 10-15% since I have “short” heels.

They fit perfectly and, more importantly, Emma approves.

1. Double pointed needles [↩]
2. What brown alpaca cardigan? I hear you inquire.  It’s almost-finished.  It needs buttons.  I have the buttons — lovely copper-colored ones with wyverns on them– I’m just not so great at actually finishing an FO.  So, you’ll see it when I get the buttons sewn on.  They’re right here on my desk.  Really.  Right next to my almost-finished 2009 income tax returns. [↩]